Playing for Pride

With the girls’ softball season about to start, fifth-grader Laurie Bird Preston can’t decide what to do. Her friends are trying out for the team, but Laurie knows she’s no softball player—basketball is her sport. She helped lead her middle school’s girls’ basketball team to a state championship just a few weeks earlier. What fun will she have playing a sport she’s no good at and might not even like? But with patience, practice—and help from her friends and an eccentric old woman with a mysterious past—Laurie might just learn that she doesn’t have to be the best player to be part of the team.